The tax-free personal allowance is being raised to £11,500 with the Chancellor declaring 31 million people will be paying less tax and 1.3m of the lowest paid taken out of tax altogether.

Mr Osborne also announced the higher rate threshold will rise from £42,385 to £45,000 from April next year, taking more than half a million people "who should never have been paying the higher rate out of that higher tax band altogether".